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A German City's Long Focus on the Sun
FREIBURG, Germany -- Rolf Disch has harnessed the sun in his city of Freiburg, starting with his own house.
It looks like an upside-down Apollo spacecraft and serves as a testing ground for ideas dreamed up by the 63-year-old solar architect.
The home slowly turns with the sun to charge a billboard-sized solar panel on the roof, and the waterless toilet emits an occasional malodorous whiff. Hanna Lehmann, Disch's wife, says she doesn't mind these features but admits she'd like to have a freezer, except that it would eat up too much electricity for her husband's liking.
"I miss my Campari on ice," she said.
Disch and his city are pioneers in energy-saving, and a growing number of eco-tourists flock here to admire his house, known as the Heliotrope, from the Greek words for "sun" and "turn." Across the city, solar panels are on everything from the soccer stadium to entire neighborhoods with homes that produce more energy than they use.
"Energy was too cheap for people to take it seriously, but with the rise in energy costs and the IPCC report people see that they have to look for other solutions now," Disch said, referring to the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which documented scientific evidence for global warming.
With its focus on solar energy, Freiburg demonstrates the progress that can be made by promoting, developing and using renewable energy. But the city of more than 200,000 in the sunny southwestern corner of the country also is an example of how far technology in the solar sector has to go _ it produces less than 1 percent of its electricity from the sun.
Residents boast that Freiburg's solar power roots go back to a protest in 1975 against plans for a nuclear plant.
"They didn't want nuclear power in their backyards and fields," said Thomas Dresel of the city's Environmental Protection Agency.
The protest also drew experts who helped develop alternative energy solutions, Dresel said. The region now has more than 900 solar installations and is home to leading research institutions and companies working to make renewable energy more practical.
In 1981, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems was founded in Freiburg, and a number of similar facilities followed. Fraunhofer now employs some 500 people and is Europe's largest solar energy research institute.
Germany as a whole has followed Freiburg's lead in trying to save energy, encouraged by the environmentally friendly Green Party that was in former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's governing coalition. In 2000, Germany decided to phase out nuclear plants by 2020, and it has adopted legislation promoting the development and use of renewable energy sources.
Renewables made up more than 5 percent of Germany's total primary energy supply in 2006, according the Environment Ministry. The government's goal is to increase the share of electric power from renewables to 12.5 percent by 2010 and 20 percent by 2020.
Wind energy remains the country's leading renewable source of electricity, but solar power use has increased to about 750 megawatts installed in 2006, up from 83 megawatts in 2002, according to the German Solar Industry Association.
The solar industry is now becoming a $6 billion a year business that builds more than 50 percent of the world's installed solar panels. About 43,000 people work in the industry, according to the association.
The federal government has spent more than $1.75 billion on photovoltaic research since the late 1990s.
"Germany is technologically leading in solar technology, most solar plants are installed here and, what is even more important, are produced here," said Carsten Koernig, head of the German Solar Industry Association. "And this is the decisive factor, because other countries will follow and then we want to supply these huge growth markets with solar technology 'made in Germany.'"
In Freiburg, the city government started encouraging saving power in 1986 in "direct reaction" to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of that year, and city and scientists have worked well together, said Karin Schneider, the Fraunhofer Institute's spokeswoman.
More than half the year is sunny here, "but it doesn't really matter if we're here or in the rest of Europe," said the environmental agency's Dresel.
Although most Freiburgers still live under traditional tile roof homes, homes built in the city's renovated Vauban district must follow low-energy standards. These include triple-thick glass windows and walls of compressed natural materials _ that help create all the energy they will need. These cost around 15 percent more than a conventional house, according to Disch.
These "passive" houses lie in a zone with strict limits on car traffic. Some cynics poke fun at the spectacle of solar panels mounted on a parking garage, but Freiburgers generally have embraced the culture of renewable energy sources.
Disch's architectural firm is in the Solar Ship, a mixed residential and commercial building with "Plus energy" apartments he designed. The apartments, atop the ship, have solar panels that generate four times the energy they consume.
The headquarters building of solar panel maker Solar-Fabrik features a photovoltaic facade and a generator run on vegetable oil that meets all the building's energy needs.
The power company Badenova says about 10 percent of its customers now opt for paying more to have renewable energy.
Another initiative combines solar technology and sport. The city's soccer team showers after games with water heated by solar panels on the stadium roof. The team gave season tickets to investors in the project.
Other panels on the stadium earn money by feeding electricity into the power grid and were financed by a partnership of local team SC Freiburg and Badenova, which offered public shares in the project.
For all Freiburg's efforts to use renewable energy, Dresel acknowledges that the sun generates just 0.74 percent of his city's electricity supply.
"For the time being it's still very small, but the qualitative aspect is very strong," Dresel said. "This creates momentum for the future."
Renewable energy in the Freiburg region makes up almost 4 percent of energy production. The city has set a target of 10 percent of renewable usage by 2010. Freiburg already has set some low energy requirements for home buyers.
It helped that Germany's Renewable Energy Sources Act, passed in 2000, set a healthy price to be paid for renewable energy fed into the electricity grid, and that figure was revised upward in 2004.
But even in a city pioneering renewable energy, Disch complains that he has to be as creative in getting money for his projects as he is in designing them.
"It's getting less difficult," he said, "but it's still hard."
© 2007 The Associated Press
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31 Comments so far
Show AllIn our country the U.S. I think efficiency should be our first goal. There is just so much waste right now especially with our car fleet and military.
Solar panels and storage batteries seem to be coming along nicely. Electric cars and plug in hybrids are making inroads. Most of what is happening though seems in spite of our myopic government and lobbying efforts by big energy.
We can lead the way into the future or we can be a consumer of other countries products and technology.
Sooner or later the fossil fuel will peter out and we will all use renewable energy. Better start early than late. Almost all modern inventions came out of America, and I was hoping that they would also be forerunners on safe and renewable. Come on America, beat everyone to it.
We should use fossil fuels to develop renewable energy sources and use as much renewable energy as possible. Renewable is available and unless we use it we lose it. If we use renewable, we can save non-renewable fossil fuels for later to create even more renewable resources.
And the leader of Germany, like Bush, just recently logged back onto nuclear power.
Eliminating waste! No. 1!
Germany sent satellites into space using state of the art solar panels instead of U-235 like the NASA relies on. They powered their craft to the outer planets where the Sun barely shines!
I suffer refrigeration blues too. I want to design a solar frig that uses the sun instead of a propane flame used in camper models.
sjc is right, we need fossel fuel for future more important profects, where it's the only choice.
Buy a swamp cooler MNBILL, and use rain water for the coooling fluid. They use about two dollars a month worth of electricity.
Originating from Germany I know there are many people who took the energy problem in their own hands. Innovation doesn't happen while You sleep. For a single family will already be able to live in a 'self-sustained' home in Germany. This part of Europe is not known to deliver 365 days of sunshine like in many areas in the US. Living in Hawaii it is a shame not to see solar panels on EVERY roof, specifically on Government buildings. But that's our Government. They rather go to war, spend Trillions of dollars for wars and corporate welfare, than using all that money to go one step further, oh, sorry, reads than using all that money to make the FIRST STEP to ease the costs of living and the strain on the environment.
The only thing the US can beat is militarily inferior countries, using depleted uranium, phosphor and napalm.
Last but not least, Germany has no LEADER. Those days ended with Hitler in front of his bunker. It is now called Chancellor and at such, Angela Merkel is the greatest disgrace for femininity one can think of.
But yes, she is Germany's 'Busch' with the same implications. They even have what they call a 'Great Coalition', meaning that it absolutely doesn't matter whether You vote Damnocrats (SPD) or Repiglicons (CDU/CSU). They just do whatever the hell pleases them. Until the next elections. Sounds familiar?
The next revolution needs to be global and powered by regenerative energy. I'm going to order some German solar panels...
Cheers to Germany! Not perfect, but still hundreds of years ahead of the warmongering barbarian Americans! Going from the southern USA to visit Germany is like visiting another planet. Such lovely people living so nicely together in cooperation, wiht the gov't actually for the people and involved in ensuring that all of them have important things like healthcare, education, transportation, and no huge vulgar, military agression budget.
Perhaps the lack of blood on German hands is part of what makes the German people seem so wholesome & attractive compared to Americans.
Presently US tax dollars under Bush II have spurred the violent deaths of over 800,000 Iraqis of all ages plus over a million crippled for life.
I don't understand the efficiency of rotating the house; why not just rotate the solar panel? That, in itself, would save a lot of energy! This project seems more like PR than science.
Could be that after this unrefined US administration is gone, the US will become more progressive in its thinking of solar energy, that is, unless the oil companies and those who could care less about others, will be looking for greedier and selfish desirable ways to enrich themselves more so, and not the nation. Follow the money of the corporate world, and there you'll locate the direction in which the US is heading, "NOT leading!!" Our congratulations to the German peoples who are thinking about their future energy needs and requirements!
NMB.
There was a group of students from MIT that built a solar thermal trough array for electricity, cooling and refrigeration in Africa as a graduate project in a contest. They used a power steering pump as an expander to drive the alternator for electricity and used the waste heat for absorption cooling and refrigeration.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/lesotho.html
RE: WOW! SOMETHING POSITIVE!
Like the turn left in Latin America, and like the energy breakthroughs in windpower in Germany -
http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/Dec98/123098a.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1220-05.htm
[also, see a great american prospect article - search wind power germany; website currently down]
- a gleam of light...amid the gloom -
World Bank's Dirty Power Plan
The G-8 is forsaking clean energy for developing countries in favor of nuclear and coal.
October 5, 2006 10:02 AM
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/05/world_banks_dirty_power_plan.php
RE: WOWEE! SOMETHING POSITIVE!
Yay, like the turn left in Latin America, and like the even more successful breakthroughs in windpower in Germany -
http://www.commondreams.org/pressreleases/Dec98/123098a.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1220-05.htm
- a gleam of light...amid the gloom -
World Bank's Dirty Power Plan
The G-8 is forsaking clean energy for developing countries in favor of nuclear and coal.
October 5, 2006 10:02 AM
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/10/05/world_banks_dirty_power_plan.php
This is news only to USA, near Heidelberg back in 1975 a friend of mine had me help him carry solar panels to the roof top of his house. His has worked since I believe.
Bush and Cheny use more energy in war in one day than we can even imagine. We have to stop that NOW.
We need to find a way to have fuel in ten years.
Bill
I sincerely apologise if I offended anyone with my prior comment. My intent was to note that Chancellor Merkel has done the same thing that Bush has. They both are now embracing atomic power. I didn't explain my thoughts.
As for the United States being a top dog? Some of us only think we are, many of us know we now are doggy do-do. Cheney/Bush have tossed the pooper scooper and Pelosi refuses to put it on the table. She's afraid she might cause a rukus. Put the shovel on the table Nancy and start cleaning up the shit.
I am anxiously awaiting any type of electric car or even a high fuel efficiency model, but just saw a commercial for a discount on a super duty or extended cab pickup.
Everyday on the road around here I see won ton duellies with a single rider and chrome trim etc. that makes it impossible to haul anything.
I am toying with the idea of an electric conversion but I would be over my head unless there was a kit.
Point is that it is difficult (made that way intentionally) to get really energy efficient in the USA.
I am curious as to the rational corporations will advance to claim they own the sun.
RE: WIND POWER IN GERMANY - GOOD FOR JOBS TOO
As hopeforthefuture notes, alternative technology is not only good for the environment, it puts people to work - this 2004 article from Tom Paine discusses windpower's success in Germany:
"Schleswig-Holstein: Cleaner Than Cows:
Pollution-Free Power Leaps Forward -- In Germany"
"The state of Schleswig-Holstein, home to 2.8 million people as well as energy-intensive industries like shipbuilding, generates about 19 percent of its electricity from wind, according to the German Wind Energy Association. In certain locales, that figure jumps to 75 percent..."
MORE:
http://www.tompaine.com/Archive/scontent/3875.html
There are some invisible suns too. They radiate particular energies that we could not live without. Someday soon, hundreds of millions - probably all the progressive thinking people,will know this to be true - not as a matter of belief or faith, but as a matter of direct experience and knowledge. Probably within the next 20 or 30 years, the world will go through some radical, revolutionary changes - that will change it for the better. Poverty, war, global warming, and all the other dreadful ills caused by political corruption will become things of the past. We are fast approaching the end of a barbaric age and the beginning of a period that will be much brighter than the vast majority the world's futurists have imagined. Believe it or not!
-------------------------------------
"He shall proclaim the norm. Lovely in the beginning,
lovely in the middle, and lovely in the end thereof."
Gautama Buddha - speaking about the World Teacher -
http://www.share-international.org
Are any of you aware how cheap and within reach the financing of a New Manhattan Project would be, given the political will?
(btw, for concrete figures on the low funds for solar research, read this NYT article from Monday: Solar Power Wins Enthusiasts but Not Money, NYT, 2007/07/16. Also check out Edwin Black's book "Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives http://www.internalcombustionbook.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Internal-Combustion-Corporations-Governments-Alternatives/dp/0312359071 )
Government funding for solar energy research remains depressingly low, especially when compared to the $6+ billion wasted every year for ethanol subsidies. Taxpayer money goes up in smoke for converting food to fuel. Worse, corn needs the most pesticides, herbicides, and nitrate fertilizers of any food crop, uses tons of water per gallon of ethanol, and produces enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Yet corn ethanol provides no energy independence as it consumes, all told, more fossil fuel during all stages of production than it replaces, as Cornell agro-ecologist David Pimentel has shown. Shifting ethanol funds to research could make the energy revolution happen, fast!
I am aware that Dr Pimentel's work has been challenged by other studies, so I sent him a letter asking about the status of the debate and an explanation for the discrepancy. Here's a short quote from his reply:
"The way that the pro-ethanol investigators are able to obtain a 25% positive ethanol energy return instead of a 30% negative energy return is by omitting many of the energy inputs. For example, they omit farm labor, farm machinery, hybrid corn, irrigation, processing machinery, and others. Why are these energy inputs omitted when agricultural economists when calculating crop enterprise data include all of these inputs plus others?"
This is probably the most important sentence in this article:
"Germany is technologically leading in solar technology, most solar plants are installed here and, what is even more important, are produced here," said Carsten Koernig, head of the German Solar Industry Association. "And this is the decisive factor, because other countries will follow and then we want to supply these huge growth markets with solar technology 'made in Germany.'"
If we in America don't really get our backs into solar energy research (and not just research but actual implementation) we will lose the next great wave of jobs. These would be green jobs. Solar implementation jobs would be immune to outsourcing to other countries since they inherently require local people to do the job (although to make sure of this we should establish a national license only available to US citizens, not to foreigners or even US residents if they are not citizens since that would allow companies to exploit people and pay only hunger wages not living wages) but they alone are not enough to replace the millions of manufacturing jobs we have lost. We also need jobs in the manufacture of green technology equipment (mainly solar but also wind, tide, wave and ocean thermal differentialenergy conversion systems). We can't just keep buying everything from other countries. It is economically unsustainable.
hopeforthefuture
Re: 'Why rotate the entire house instead of just the rooftop solarpanels?'
Because every external surface is then available for the collection photons.
As a bonus, an entire room moves into sunlight allowing one to turn off any lighting.
As another bonus, sunlight = heat. Heat exchangers could be used to warm water on the sunlit side and to cool it down on the shaded side.
Those ingenious Germans and their attention to detail, eh?
"...spent more than $1.75 billion on photovoltaic research since the late 1990s"
We, the United States citizens, spend more than that each WEEK in Iraq.
Yay,
after years of reading articles on this website there´s one about my hometown. I took this as an opportunity to finally register and want to thank you guys for the great work you´re doing here.
As to the article: Isn´t it painfully obvious the U.S. is falling behind in the areas that really matter like the environment, human rights, real democracy and quality of life (e.g. healthcare)?
@itsjustkarma: BTW i take offence at your comparison of our political parties with te U.S. republicans. They may not be perfect but at least usually (or at least sometimes) they give the impression of trying to solve problems instead of only playing politics all the time. Comparing Angela Merkel to Shrub is patently ridiculous. She has shown some real leadership at the recent G8 summit championing action on global warming forcing him to at least publicly acknowledge what is perhaps the single greatest threat to all of us.
To all the CommonDreams people with technical, business, or communications skills: there are dozens of blogs and newsgroups extant today that have vigorous, highly-focused discussions about grass-roots R&D and implementation of various types of renewable energy and conservation methods.
For those readers that are ready to move beyond hand-wringing and start making the future happen, I invite you get involved.
The internet is the single greatest defense we have from top-down stupidity. And it works. Try googling these keywords: "biodiesel solar collector group design passive telework blog" in any combination. See what pops up, and what catches your imagination.
Everyone says "America's gotta start doing manufacturing again" and "we invented the Internet. We gotta be smart. Where's all the smartness these days?".
The "smartness" is forming small cadres of can-do types, and those types are coming up with some terrific stuff. Not just ideas - no, they're making prototypes, forming into companies, installing these inventions in their homes.
Wanna get off the adrenaline- disaster- freakout- handwring- gitCherNextFix merry-go-round? OK, then. Join a group of people that is actually doing something.
Are you missing out on the real action? Maybe. What if you were part of the group that hit on a terrific idea. Wouldn't that make your day...maybe become one of your abiding satisfactions?
If we decide to do this, there's nothing anyone, anywhere, at any level can do to stop it. Nothing. No matter how stupid they are, they won't be able to screw this up.
So if you really want to Stick it to the Man, pick a renewable energy tool, and learn about it, use it for yourself, and then tell someone else about it.
This is wonderful, but there is already a person here in the US that has a really good idea using solar & hydrogen fuel cells.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0315/p12s01-sten.html?s=hns
http://www.off-grid.net/2007/06/12/pr-puff/
We have the knowledge and technology to make the world a paradise. It's up to our government to guide industry in the appropriate direction. And it's up to the people to guide our government, not to the industry government is entrusted to guide.
http://ni4d.us/
RE: MONEY SPENT ON MILITARY vs. MAKING WORLD A PARADISE
ezeflyer July 20th, 2007 11:28 am
"We have the knowledge and technology to make the world a paradise. It's up to our government to guide industry in the appropriate direction. And it's up to the people to guide our government..."
RESPONSE: Not only do we have the knowledge and technology - we have the money, too. As Nathan Andover pointed out, vs. the "'$1.75 billion" spent on "photovoltaic research since the late 1990s,'" the U.S. spends "more than that each WEEK in Iraq." (Nathan Andover July 20th, 2007 10:21)
The renovation of U.S. jobs, education, services, and human priorities that could have been realized is tragic and enraging.
RE: GETTING ACTIVE/INVOLVED TO MAKE RENEWABLE ENERGY HAPPEN
OuterBeltway July 20th, 2007 8:51 am
1) You must know this is a periodic call on this website - I agree that the internet can either funnel off energies into posts w/those who mainly agree w/them, or it can be a springboard for action.
2) It would be helpful if you put your money where your mouth is by not just enjoining others to get active, but citing the websites you have googled and the types of activism they have enabled you to engage in.
3) Generally, I look to connecting w/disenfranchised and atomized sectors of population vs. monied classes to make change happen. But, in this case, I wonder whether...it's not my 'area,' as they say...but I wonder whether, if a proposal for a 'model wind power' industry were drawn up - in one area of one state - progressive investors of the Paul Newman variety would be willing to invest in it.
The idea would be that such a project would provide a concrete, visible example of energy alternatives, that might validate such resources as feasible, and inspire similar examples. There could be more than one purpose for such an alternative energy station - not only compete w/other energy resources, but, e.g., support an energy foundation dedicated to promoting such sources...
So, I want to cover the roof of my home with solar panels. Who do I order the best from? How do I install them? How do I store the energy or sell it to the power company (FPL)?
If sun rays were adequate weapons of war, we would have had solar energy around the globe,__ years ago.